Officials Planning for Next Year’s Snow

REVERE – There are still some signs of the seven feet of snow that got dumped on the city this past winter and officials are looking ahead to next winter.

Monday night the City Council subcommittee on Public Works tossed around several ideas that may better manage parking and snow removal next year.

“Clearly this past winter was a catalyst for serious reform,” said Mayor Dan Rizzo. “We have to create a plan that makes sense. Revere wasn’t built for all these cars.”

He noted that in Lynn and other communities snow emergencies force all cars off the road. To do that in Revere would mean people would have to park off-street at the MBTA garage or other commercial lots such as Wonderland and Suffolk Downs. In Lynn over 500 cars were towed for parking in the street. In Revere only 15-20 cars were towed. In some communities flashing blue lights on light poles warn people of a snow emergency. This is also something the committee plans to look into.

Another option to consider is allowing parking only on one side of the street. Ward 2 Councillor Ira Novoselsky said some streets should be one-way even if it doesn’t snow. He noted that some cars parked on the street were actually from other towns that had parking bans, like Winthrop.

Teaching snowplow contractors how to plow is another idea. Several of the councillors noted that some plow drivers continuously just went down the middle of the street. As the winter went on they lost the ability to push back curb-to-curb.

Fire Chief Gene Doherty said there are now markers for the over 900 fire hydrants in the city and he has the $30,000 needed in his budget. The DPW and firefighters will put them on the hydrants.

DPW head Don Goodwin said it was a tough winter. There were 26 hydrants just sheared off their mounts, 50 catch basins and manholes to repair and hundreds of signs missing.

“The infrastructure took a beating,” he said, adding that potholes and previously patched trenches in the city are being worked on thanks to $117,000 from the state.